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Caring, the Self, and Self-Care

painting of laborers at construction site

The concept of self-care, as of late, has gained a kind of cultural omnipresence. Originating in the context of healthcare, self-care was, at first, used to describe the ways in which patients with chronic illness might work to improve their physical health: a balanced diet, regular exercise, and the like. But having grown beyond this strictly clinical context, self-care is now something much more: for students and teachers; for parents and children; for business owners and employees; for HR professionals and for anti-capitalists. Self-care has even circled back on its origins: it is no longer just something for people who are receiving healthcare, but — in the light of a crisis of mental health among nurses, physicians, and medical students — also for those who provide it.

Self-care is, of course, something which is deeply important: there’s a reason, after all, that the medical community has emphasized self-care for over 50 years, and that well-meaning friends will advise you to care for yourself when they see that you aren’t. But for all of the self-care advice which you might encounter — to go on walks, to journal, to take a bubble bath, or read a book — ubiquity has not brought the concept of self-care clarity.

In my first week of medical school, we frequently encountered talk of self-care. In PowerPoint presentations, we were told to prioritize diet, exercise, and time with our families. We were told to remember to drink water; we were invited to guided yoga sessions and optional lectures on mindfulness. When a panel on physician wellness was held, we were told that what we were doing was hard, but that it got better: we just needed self-care — to meditate or keep a mental health journal — in the meantime.

In your own professional context, you’ve likely heard similar advice, whether it be from a teacher, professor, or boss. This advice, however, admits to a specific understanding of what it means to care: namely, one which is reactive. Self-care is most frequently emphasized in environments which are inherently stressful: our classrooms, where students face exams and social pressures, and our places of work, where failing to meet expectations can deeply impact both you and your loved ones. Much of the same can be said of medical school, where advice on self-care was a theme of the first week precisely because it would be required the week after. Across these contexts, self-care is a kind of coping strategy: a way to deal with the hardships which we will encounter in our day-to-day lives.

This picture of what it means to care for oneself, however, is simply incomplete. While self-care is an important tool for dealing with stress, human flourishing involves more than just coping. Really caring for someone — including yourself — means not just being reactive, but also proactive: it means not just finding strategies for dealing with stressors, but also seeking to thrive. Self-care advice, however, is primarily oriented towards the former rather than latter: we use self-care as a way to cope, and much less often as a way to flourish.

A large part of this likely comes from the emphasis on self-care in educational and professional contexts. Self-care, in these spaces, is a means to an end: even if you’re fortunate enough to have a teacher or boss which truly cares about your thriving, self-care is emphasized insofar as it facilitates productivity. This is why appeals to self-care can strike a student or employee as shallow, or even unserious: in many classrooms and workplaces, self-care isn’t really for you, but for the sake of the organization. And, further, students and employees know what would likely happen if their self-care was oriented more towards their thriving rather than their productivity: self-care cannot interfere with attendance or the satisfaction of expectations. Here, we can see how reactive self-care benefits our institutions, while proactive self-care, sometimes, does not.

I don’t blame us for our focus on reactive self-care. Many don’t even have the privilege to think reactively about self-care, let alone proactively. But this raises an important point. Self-care is, obviously, something which you do — self-care places the burden of both reactive and proactive care solely on your shoulders. Human flourishing, though, is rarely something which can be understood in such solitary terms. Self-care emphasizes the self, and fails to acknowledge the fact that your well-being is, in large part, context-dependent: the expectations placed on you at work and school, and the stressors you encounter there, will affect your well-being. A single-minded focus on self-care, then, can separate cause from effect, and direct our attention towards stabilizing our well-being rather than the reasons our well-being is poor: it is an incredibly effective tool for shifting the entire responsibility for one’s poor well-being entirely onto the individual, rather than the environment (the school, workplace, or society) which most likely bears some of the blame. Your school may emphasize self-care in the classroom, but ignore the bullying which makes you need self-care in the first place. Your workplace may offer classes on meditation, but if your self-care conflicts with your productivity, your boss will likely find someone who prioritizes the latter. If self-care is to truly be a form of care, then, it cannot rely entirely on the self, nor can it abstract the self from its context — and the fact that, at some level, our institutions have an obligation to care for us as well.

If we take these observations seriously, our acts of self-care will point towards us in a radically different direction. Self-care is not about struggling to keep one’s head above water: self-care is about the pursuit of thriving, and the transformation of our institutions in a way which fosters that thriving. It also challenges us to think about our obligations to others: the ways in which we burden others with their own care, rather than lifting that burden ourselves. Human thriving is complex and communal, and relies on more than bubble baths and journaling; but if we seek ways to truly care for ourselves and others, we work towards something which is much more meaningful.

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Moral Burnout

photograph of surgeon crying in hospital hallway

Many workers are moving towards a practice of “quiet quitting,” which, though somewhat misleadingly named, involves setting firm boundaries around work and resolving to meet expectations rather than exceed them. But not everyone enjoys that luxury. Doctors, teachers, and other caregivers may find that it is much harder to avoid going above and beyond when there are patients, students, or family members in need.

What happens when you can’t easily scale back from a state of overwork because of the moral demands of your job? It might lead to a specific kind of burnout: moral burnout. Like other varieties of burnout, moral burnout can leave you feeling mentally and physically exhausted, disillusioned with your work, and weakened by a host of other symptoms. Unlike other varieties of burnout, moral burnout involves losing sight of the basic point or meaning of morality itself.

How could this happen? Many people enter caregiving professions out of a desire to help people and do the right thing — out of a deep commitment to morality itself. When people in these professions find that, despite their best efforts, they cannot meet the needs around them, it can be easy to feel defeated.

Over time, the meaning of those moral commitments can become eroded to where all that is left is a sense of obligation or burden without any joy attached to it. The letter of the moral law has survived, but not its spirit.

Moral philosophers often try to defend morality to the immoralist who only cares about themselves and maybe the people around them. But it seems to me that there might be an equally strong challenge from the other side: the hypermoralist who tries to follow morality’s demands as best they can but who is left cold and exhausted, no longer seeing the point of morality though still feeling bound to its dictates. What might the moral philosopher say in defense to this kind of case? It seems that it depends on diagnosing what exactly has gone wrong.

So, what has gone wrong when “moral burnout” appears? First, it seems that, like in normal cases of burnout, the person is not receiving enough support or care themselves. This might be from a systematic failure, such as doctors being unable to get their patients the care they need due to injustices in the healthcare system. It could be from an interpersonal failure, where friends and family members in that person’s life fail to see their needs or adequately support them. Or perhaps it is from an individual failure, such as the person failing to reach out for or accept help.

The main problem is that there is a significant mismatch between the amount of morally significant labor that the person gives and the amount of support and recognition they receive.

This mismatch alone, however, is not enough to explain why the hypermoralist is left cold by morality. Sure, they may feel exhausted and disillusioned with their job or the people around them, but they might say something like “morality is still worthwhile; it’s just that other people aren’t holding up their end of the deal with me.”

What else is required to become disillusioned with morality itself? Especially for those who were raised to take all the responsibility on themselves, it’s easy to misunderstand morality as having to do only with duties to others and not at all with duties to oneself. In this case, the person can fail to properly value or take care of themselves, and lose sight of an important part of morality – self-respect. It is no surprise that this kind of person would become disillusioned.

Even for those who understand the importance of duties to oneself, it can be easy to fall into a similar trap of self-sacrifice if no one else will take responsibility for a clear and present need.

Another possibility is that, even though the person recognizes and works to fulfill duties of self-respect and self-care, they may find themselves caught up in a kind of rule fetishism, where morality becomes merely a list of moral tasks to complete. Self-care becomes another obligation to fulfill, rather than a chance to rest and recuperate. In this state, morality can seem to be a matter solely of burdens and obligations that must be completed, without the sense of meaning that one would normally get from saying a kind word, helping someone else, or standing up for oneself. Perhaps the hypermoralist has lost sight of the possibility of healthier relationships with others, or is unable to set healthy boundaries within their relationships or accept friendship and help from others.

Like friendship, morality is not transactional – it isn’t simply a set of tasks to complete. Morality is essentially relational.

Though praising and blaming ourselves and others for the actions we perform is a core part of our moral practices, these norms allow us to analyze whether we stand in the right relation with ourselves and with others. It is no surprise, then, that the hypermoralist has lost the meaning of morality if they have substituted its relational core of love for self and love for others with a list of tasks and obligations that lack relational context.

So, what can the hypermoralist do to regain a sense of moral meaning? The answer to that question depends on a host of considerations that will vary based on the individual in question. The basic gist, however, is that it’s vital to seek meaningful and healthy relationships and advocate for support when it’s needed. For example, a doctor in an unjust working environment might protest the indifference and profit-motivation of insurance companies who stand in the way of their patients getting the care they need. Ideally, this would not be another task that the doctor takes up alone but one that allows them to be in solidarity with others in their position — meeting people they can trust and rely upon along the way. Seeking out those meaningful and healthy relationships (moral and otherwise) can be tricky. But I hope for all of us that we can find good friends.

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Can You Be a Different Person After the Pandemic?

photograph of woman in masking looking at reflection in the window

An opinion piece in The New York Times recently made the rounds on social media, and makes what looks like a pretty big claim: “you can be a different person after the pandemic.” While the title of the article quickly became a meme, the article itself emphasizes the possibility of a “post-pandemic dispositional makeover.” For example, if you were the kind of person who was chronically late before the pandemic, you can work on developing your conscientiousness so that once you’re able to meet people in the real world again you’ll be on time. Or, if you’re an introverted person, you can work on becoming more sociable; if you’re easily annoyed you can work on being more agreeable, etc. The important takeaway is that your personality is not set in stone, and that changes to major aspects of your personality are achievable, in “just a few months.”

Can you be a different person after the pandemic? That, of course, depends on what you mean by “different person.” The kinds of changes depicted in the memes – e.g. changing from human to eagle, or Stars Wars force-ghost, etc. – are likely not achievable. But what about changes to my personality? Are those achievable, and if so, will I be a “different person” as a result?

Questions about personal identity – i.e., questions about what makes you you – have been mulled over by philosophers for a very long time. There are big questions here about whether you are anything over and above the physical stuff that makes up your body, whether you have a soul (and if you do, what it’s like), whether you have any kind of “essence” (and if you do, what it’s like), and whether you can really be a different thing at different points in time. Plato, for instance, argued that you have an immortal soul that is composed of different parts, and that the way these parts are in balance with one another determine the way you are and the things you do. Other philosophers don’t put much stock in the idea of things like souls. Jean Paul Sartre, for instance, took a look at a view like Plato’s and flipped it on its head: instead of having some kind of essence that determines what you do, Sartre said that the things that you do determine what we think of as your essence. While someone like Plato thinks that essence comes before existence, Sartre argued that existence comes before essence.

It is this latter, broadly Sartrean view that seems to be underlying the opinion from The New York Times that you can, in fact, be a different person after the pandemic: if you change your habits, if you start doing different things, then you will be a different person as a result. Instead of appealing to philosophy, it appeals to work in psychology, specifically the “Big Five” personality test. The test – which you can take online for free, if you’re so inclined – gives you a score on five different characteristics: extroversion, openness to experience, emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Scoring “high” or “low” on any of these measures is not meant to be necessarily good or bad, and does not differentiate between different people’s reasons that they might have for answering any given way on any given question. While many, many personality tests have failed to be endorsed by the scientific community (perhaps the most infamous being the Myers-Briggs personality test) the Big Five ostensibly has empirical support. 

In taking the test myself, I was not surprised at the results. I am neither high- nor low-scoring on extraversion or conscientiousness, I’m pretty agreeable and not super emotionally stable, and I maxed-out open-mindedness. Is this the personality profile of the kind of person I would like to be? In some sense, sure; in others, not so much. I wish I got less stressed out by things, I can be overly negative and complain a lot, and being a bit more sociable certainly wouldn’t hurt. Maybe coming out of the pandemic I can be this new and better person. “Changing a trait requires acting in ways that embody that trait,” The New York Times article says, “you can behave ‘as if’ you are the person you want to be. Pretty soon, you might find that it is you.”

How are you supposed to do this? Therapy is one option: “a month of therapy — any kind of therapy — reduced neuroticism by about half the amount you might expect to see it naturally decline over the course of your entire life.” No time for therapy? Maybe you could download an app to remind you to “perform small tasks to help tweak [your] personalities, like ‘talk to a stranger when you go grocery shopping.’” Small changes in behavior over time may stick, and after a while you might find yourself a more gregarious shopper, assuming that’s the kind of person you want to be.

There are clearly scientific questions we can ask here, about whether such apps are effective in changing behavior, how long-lasting such changes are, and what that means in terms of changing aspects of one’s personality. I’ve raised one philosophical question, about what these kinds of changes might mean for our identity, and what it might mean to say that one becomes a “different person” as a result. But we might also consider an ethical question. My personality test told me that I’m not a super high-scorer in terms of extroversion or agreeableness. I might then reflect on these results and think that maybe being a grumpy introvert is not my ideal form of being. If it’s the case that I can change aspects of my personality, maybe it’s not only the case that I can be a different person after the pandemic, but that I ought to be, as well.

Of course, a complication of pandemic life has been that many people, I suspect, have not really felt “like themselves” over the past year-and-a-bit. The pandemic has made people more stressed and anxious for many reasons, and that’s no doubt going to show up in the results of personality tests. As I’ve written here before, while the pandemic has offered some the opportunity for self-improvement, it is perhaps better to focus on self-maintenance. When thinking about the kind of person we want to be after the pandemic, I think we should say something similar: while it may be a worthwhile goal to become a better person, it is also worthwhile to aim for getting back to normal. Instead of being a different person after the pandemic, perhaps we should focus on being the people we were before it started.

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Of Pajamas and Self-Care

photograph of masked businessmen in tie and pajamas working at laptop at home

If you’re like me, then you’ve been spending a lot of time working from home as of late. This has its benefits – e.g., no need to commute into work, snacks are abundant, my cat is here – and its detriments – e.g., I spend hours and hours sitting in the same place and looking at the same computer monitor, day-in, day-out. One additional benefit comes in the form of what you wear: without having to be around coworkers you’re pretty much free to wear whatever you want (except on days with Zoom calls, of course). A popular pandemic choice has been pajamas: comfortable and easy to just throw on, you can sit in comfort as you watch the barriers between your work life and non-work life slowly dissolve away into nothingness.

While pajamas and/or sweatpants have become the de facto lockdown uniform, numerous news outlets have recently reported some worrying news: a recent study showed that wearing your pajamas all day while you work correlates with reports of declining mental health. “Academics who are tempted to remain in pajamas during the work day should think again” says Insider Higher Ed, warning that “those who stay in bedroom attire are twice as likely to report a worsened state of mental health.” While the study in question did not show any effect of pajama-wearing on one’s productivity, other outlets have warned that all-day pajama wearing could be part of a larger set of behaviors that would result in such a decline, urging those who work from home to “create a routine and structure that you force yourself to stick to” (a routine that involves, presumably, changing into something other than pajamas).

Let’s say that one has some minimal obligations to one’s own well-being; in other words, you have a duty to take care of yourself, and part of that duty will involve your mental health. If it is, in fact, the case that pajama-wearing correlates with decreased mental health, then it would seem that one should throw on some less comfortable, at least during the workday.

Still, one might not be convinced. While pajama wearing may correlate with decreased mental health, one might think that it is surely any number of the many additional variables – such as being isolated, not being able to see or interact with one’s friends and family face-to-face, not being able to do many of the activities one did in the pre-pandemic world, etc. – that are causing this reported decrease in mental health. If anything, one might think, wearing pajamas all day can be something that can make you feel just a little bit better.

Hence we see another side to the pajama issue: instead of providing warnings about mental health and establishing routines, some businesses have begun to cater to the work-from-home lifestyle by offering a range of “home loungewear.” “As working from home becomes the new normal, many are finding that changing out of pajamas can be quite a daunting task,” says Celia Fernandez at Insider. Rather than advising that we find something else to wear, she instead suggests that we lean into it, helpfully providing some “perfect loungewear options that feel like pajamas without looking like them.” If wearing pajamas helps you feel better, then you might as well exercise this little bit of self-care with style.

We are thus being presented with conflicting messages: on the one hand, wearing pajamas all day may be indicative of having fallen into a rut, and thus it seems that one ought to make changing into non-pajamas part of one’s daily routine. On the other hand, working from home all the time takes a mental toll, and so you should do whatever little things you can to make this time a little less terrible. And if wearing pajamas all day will help with that, so be it.

This conflicting advice represents the difficulty in balancing what might seem to be competing duties one has towards self-care: on the one hand, it seems that we have short-term duties to ourselves to allow us to best cope with the problems that we are dealing with here and now; on the other hand, it seems that we also have long-term duties to future selves, to make sure that we are able to cultivate habits that allow us to be happy and healthy in the long run. While we may always face this conflict to a certain extent, pandemic-times have brought some of the conflicts to the front and center, feeling both that one should do everything one can to get “back to normal,” while also feeling like one needs to just get through another day.

While there’s no solution to this problem that can be applied universally, it is worth considering what is more pressing on an individual basis. For instance, if things are feeling particularly tough on any given day and wearing some stylish pajamas will make a significant difference in how you’re feeling, then by all means go for it. If, however, you find that staying in your pajamas all day does not so much bring you comfort as it just feels like a normal part of pandemic living, then you might consider thinking about working towards improving your long-term well-being instead.

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Pandemic Life and Duties of Self-Improvement

image of woman meditating surrounded by distractions

I haven’t really done that much since last March. I mean, I’ve done the minimum number of activities required to keep myself alive, tried to stay connected to friends and family as much as possible, have tried to stay productive at work, and have stretched my legs outside every once in a while. But it feels like I could have done more. I have, for instance, been spending a lot of time doomscrolling, catching up on those shows in my Netflix queue, and losing all sense of time, but I could have been doing things that would have resulted in some degree of self-improvement. I’ve always wanted to learn how to play the guitar, and I need to improve my Danish (min dansk er forfærdelig!), and there are just a whole bunch of other hobbies and skills that I’ve wanted to pick up or improve that I never seemed to have the time for in the past. But now I’ve had the time, and I haven’t done any of these things.

Does this make me a bad person? I’ve had the opportunity for self-improvement and didn’t really do much with it. Do I have a duty to use my time to try to be better?

These questions only arise in my case because the pandemic has, in fact, presented me with means and opportunity for self-improvement in the form of extra time. A lot of people have not had the luxury of facing this particular problem. Instead of having a lot more free time, many people have found what little free time they had prior to the pandemic disappear: perhaps you have obligations to take care of family members that you didn’t before, or you’ve gotten sick or had to help out with someone else who’s been sick, or work has become much more strenuous, or you’re out of work and have had more pressing matters. If you’ve been in this position, picking up the guitar is probably pretty low down on your list of priorities.

So it’s not as though I think I’m deserving of sympathy. But, if you’re like me and have found yourself with a lot of extra hours that you can’t keep track of, you might find yourself feeling guilty that that last nearly full year could have been spent better. Is this guilt deserved?

There has, as one might suspect, been philosophical debate over whether one has any particular moral obligation towards self-improvement. Kant, for instance, argued that we do possess a certain kind of duty of this sort: it is not that we always, in every circumstance, must work towards improving ourselves, but we should definitely strive to when given the chance. Certainly, then, Kant would consider wasting a lot of time absentmindedly on the internet as something worthy of moral condemnation.

On the other hand, you might wonder if we really have any duties towards self-improvement at all: while I certainly have duties to help other people, we might think that when it comes to ourselves we are pretty much free to do what we want. So if I want to learn a lot of new skills and become a better version of myself, that’s great; but if I want to sit on the couch and do nothing all day, I should be free to do so without facing any kind of negative judgment. Telling me to do otherwise can feel overly moralizing, a kind of self-righteous judgment in which you seem to be saying that you know how I should live my life better than I do.

Something seems wrong about both of these positions. For instance, it’s hard to determine how we’re supposed to adhere to a duty of self-improvement: does this mean that whenever I have free time that I have an obligation to, for instance, practice vocabulary in a language I want to learn? If so, this feels too demanding: I don’t seem to be doing anything wrong if I spend an evening now and then just doing nothing in particular. At the same time, if I spend all my free time doing nothing in particular, that feels like a waste. We sometimes make these kinds of judgments of other people: that it’s a shame they’re wasting their time, or their potential to develop their talents. And while this can sometimes feel moralizing, sometimes it also just feels apt: sometimes people really do waste too much time, and sometimes peoples’ efforts really could be put towards self-improvement.

Being in the midst of a global pandemic also muddies the water a bit. While one might have, on the one hand, a lot more time freed up by not having to commute to work, socialize, or really do anything else outside, one also has to deal with new challenges in the form of a dizzying amount of news, anxiety about the current and future state of the world, and a whole host of extra mental burdens that can quickly drain one’s energy and motivation to be a better version of yourself. If these matters become too distressing then they can quickly become a burden that needs to be dealt with.

It’s not clear how to evaluate the best way to make use of the extra opportunities one is afforded in the form of free time that is the result of a world that feels like it’s falling apart. Maybe, then, when it comes to duties to oneself these days, focusing on self-maintenance is more important than self-improvement: while it’s never a bad thing to work towards improvement, it feels like if you’re managing to check off the mandatory items of your to-do list in month 10 of a pandemic then you’re doing pretty well. Meaningful self-improvement can wait for another day.

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The Politics of Depression

blurred photograph of crowd on busy street at night

In contrast to the exuberant energy of the 2016 presidential election (for better or for worse), the 2020 election has been characterized by fatigue, anxiety, and even depression. Regardless of which candidate triumphs in the presidential election, many voters on both sides can’t help feeling daunted by the government’s inability to meet the needs of its citizens.

The language of illness has always been a useful lexicon for politics; the metaphor of the “body politic” informed statecraft in Europe for centuries, and enemies of the state have always been described as a disease eating away at that body. But for those members of the body politic struggling with mental illness, the question is how to remain politically active while battling depression, especially when the stakes are so high.

Depression may be the mental illness par excellence for political discourse under capitalism. While capitalism has been linked to schizophrenia (we are expected to be sober workers by day and hedonists by night, as sociologist Daniel Bell points out, which ultimately creates a fractured psyche), Mark Fisher draws comparisons between his experiences with depression and the mindset induced by capitalism. In his 2009 book Capitalist Realism, he writes that “while sadness apprehends itself as a contingent and temporary state of affairs, depression presents itself as necessary and interminable: the glacial surfaces of the depressive’s world extend to every conceivable horizon.” He sees a parallel between the “the seeming ‘realism’ of the depressive, with its radically lowered expectations, and capitalist realism.” As Fisher understands, enacting political change and fighting depression are struggles against a similar opponent.

Depression itself is becoming increasingly political, both in terms of how we conceptualize it and how we attempt to cure it. Danish literary critic Mikkel Krause Frantzen proclaims in an incendiary essay for the LA Review of Books that “any cure to the problem of depression must take a collective, political form; instead of individualizing the problem of mental illness, it is imperative to start problematizing the individualization of mental illness.” He asserts that “Dealing with depression—and other forms of psychopathology—is not only part of, but a condition of possibility for an emancipatory project today. Before we can throw bricks through windows, we need to be able to get out of bed.” This political approach to illness is rooted in a wider politicization of illness. For example, Anne Boyer writes in her recently published memoir about cancer, The Undying, that “Disease is never neutral. Treatment never not ideological. Mortality never without its politics.” Boyer rejects apolitical cancer treatment, noting that “Our genes are tested, our drinking water is not. Our body is scanned, but not our air . . . The news of cancer comes to us on the same sort of screens as the news about elections.” Like cancer, depression is often viewed as purely somatic, not as a condition with a basis in the material reality of the afflicted.

When we acknowledge that material reality, we create the potential to radicalize those with mental illness. However, the fatalistic mindset of depression often discourages political engagement. One study conducted by researchers at Pennsylvania State University, which argues that “that depression is a political phenomenon insofar as it has political sources and consequences,” found that mental illness “consistently and negatively affects voting and political participation.” Furthermore, “depression also has developmental consequences for political behavior. Adolescent depression has the potential to set individuals on a trajectory of political disengagement in adulthood.” The study paints this as a vicious cycle; without adequate mental health care, we become depressed, and then depression inhibits political engagement, which prevents healthcare policies from ever changing. The study concludes that though research into the neurological aspect of depression is extremely important, it is also,

“worthwhile to theorize about depression in terms of the social model, especially because the experience of a mood disorder such as depression is largely rooted in social circumstances. Depression is socially-situated in so far as it is not something that simply ‘happens’ to someone but arises out of the circumstances of life. This is compounded by the fact that traditionally disadvantaged groups disproportionately experience depression.”

So how can the mentally ill break out of that vicious cycle? There is no easy solution to this dilemma. Even recognizing that major changes that need to be enacted in order to create a liveable world isn’t always enough. As Frantzen says, “there is no reason to believe that abolishing private property ownership, or realizing a global and absolute cancellation of private debt, will relieve the suffering of depressed people with a single stroke, as if by magic.” For voters experiencing a sense of hopelessness at the polls, and who fear plunging to an even greater depth of hopelessness on election night, a radical kind of self-care is needed. Many have already pointed out the often vacant politics of “self-care,” which does not always promote social change as much as we’d like it to. But when self-care is able to foster “not competition among the sick, but alliances of care that will make people feel less alone and less morally responsible for their illness,” in Frantzen’s words, it is certainly a step in the right direction.

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The Ethics of Escapism (Pt. 2): Two Kinds of Escape

photograph of business man with his head buried in the sand

Shortly before Labor Day this year, polling data of the American workforce indicated that a majority (58%) of employees are experiencing some form of burnout. Not only was this an increase from the early days of the pandemic (when the number was around 45%), but over a third of respondents directly referenced COVID-19 as a cause of their increased stress. Reports on everyone from “essential” workers, to parents, to healthcare professionals and more indicate that the effects of the coronavirus are not merely limited to physical symptoms. Ironically, while the steps taken to limit COVID-19’s physical reach have been largely effective (when properly practiced), those same steps (in particular, self-imposed isolation) may be simultaneously contributing to a burgeoning mental health crisis, particularly in light of additional social pressures like widespread financial ruin, state-sanctioned racial injustices, and a vitriolic election season.

Indeed, 2020 has not been an easy year.

Nearly a century ago, J.R.R. Tolkien — creator of Gandalf, Bilbo Baggins, and the whole of Middle-Earth — explained how fantasy stories like The Lord of the Rings not only offer an “outrageous” form of “Escape” from the difficulties people encounter in the lives, but that this Escape can be “as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic.” In his essay On Fairy Stories, Tolkien asks, “Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?” It is true that Escape from reality can sometimes be irresponsible and even immoral (for more on this, see Marko Mavrovic’s recent article), but Tolkien reminds us to avoid confusing “the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter” — the problems of the latter need not apply to the former.

There are at least two ways we can distinguish between Tolkien’s two kinds of Escape: epistemically (rooted in what someone seeks to escape) and morally (concerning one’s motivations for escaping anything at all). Consider how a person might respond to the NFL’s decision to highlight a message of social justice during its games this season: if they are displeased with such displays because, as Salena Zito explains, they “are tired of politics infecting everything they do” and “ just want to enjoy a game without being lectured,” then we might describe their escape as a matter of escaping from information, perspectives, and conversations that others take to be salient. Depending on how commonly someone engages in such a practice, this could encourage the crystallization of their own biases into an “epistemic bubble” where they end up never (or only quite rarely) hearing from someone who doesn’t share their opinions. Not only can this prevent people from learning about the world, but the “excessive self-confidence” that epistemic bubbles engender can lead to a prideful ignorance about reality that threatens a person’s epistemic standing on all sorts of issues.

If, however, someone instead wants to avoid “being lectured at” while watching a football game because they wish to escape from the moral imperatives embedded within the critiques of the lecture (or, more accurately, the slogan, symbol, chant, or the like), then this is not simply an epistemic escape from information, but an escape from moral inquiry and confrontation. Failing to care about a potential moral wrong (and seeking to avoid thinking about it) is, in itself, an additional moral wrong (just imagine your response to someone ignoring their neighbor trapped in a house fire because they “just wanted to watch football”). In its worst forms, this is an escape from the responsibility of caring for the experiences, needs, and rights of others, regardless of how inconvenient it might be to care about such things (in the middle of a football game or elsewhere). Nic Bommarito has argued that being a virtuous person simply is a matter of caring about moral goods in a manner that manifests such caring by instantiating it in particular ways; much like the people who passed by the injured Samaritan on the road, escaping from reminders that we should care about others cannot be morally justified simply by selfish desires for entertainment.

Both of these are examples of Tolkien’s Flight of the Deserter: someone who has a responsibility to learn about, participate in, and defend the members of their society is choosing to escape — both epistemically and morally — from reminders of the duties incumbent upon their roles as social agents. But this is different from the Escape of the Prisoner who simply desires a temporary reprieve to unwind after a stressful day. In the absence of immediately pressing issues (like, say, your neighbor trapped in a house fire), it seems perfectly acceptable to take some time to relax, de-stress, and recharge your emotional reserves. Indeed, this seems like the essence of “self-care.”

For example, the early weeks of the first anti-pandemic lockdowns happened to coincide with the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a Nintendo game where players calmly build and tend a small island filled with cartoon animals. For a variety of reasons, quarantined players latched on to the peaceful video game, finding in it a cathartic opportunity to simply relax and relieve the stress mounting from the outside world; months later, the popularity (and profitability) of Animal Crossing has yet to wane. You can imagine the surprise, then, when this gamified Escape of the Prisoner was invaded by Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, who elected to offer virtual signs to players wanting to adorn their island in support of the Democratic candidate for president. Although it would seem an exaggeration to call this a “lecture,” insofar as someone complains about “just wanting to play a game” without being confronted with political ads, there seems to be nothing morally wrong with criticizing (or electing to avoid) Biden’s campaign tactic — probably because there is no inherent obligation to care about a politician’s attempt to get elected (in the same way that there is a duty to care for fellow creatures in need).

So, when thinking about the ethics of escape, it is important to distinguish what kind of escape we mean. Attempts to escape from our proper moral obligations (a Flight of the Deserter) will often amount to ignorant or shameful abdications of our moral responsibilities to care for each other. On the other hand, attempts to (temporarily) escape from the often-difficult burdens we bear, both by doing our duties in public society and simply by quarantining ourselves at home, will amount to taking care of the needs of our own finitude — Tolkien’s Escape of the Prisoner.

In short, just as we should care about others, we should also care for ourselves.

 

Part III – “Searching for the Personal when Everything Is Political” by Meredith McFadden

Part I – “The Ethics of Escapism” by Marko Mavrovich

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Self-Care in the Late Capitalist Era

Photo of a lowlit room with candles and a mirror and a bed

As the time for New Year’s resolutions rolls around once more, the term “self-care” is more prevalent than usual. But what really is a “care of the self”?  

For decades, self-care has been associated with women’s empowerment.  In the context of women’s traditional roles as unpaid caregivers, self-care is a radical action: by prioritizing her own needs, a woman affirms that she exists for herself and not merely for others.  Audre Lorde also saw its political potential for individuals marginalized by their race and sexual orientation: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” For people who are typically erased from public life, loving and caring for oneself when society does not is a subversive practice.

The meaning of self-care has gradually come to be associated with enjoying small pleasures in the midst of a busy life, marketed especially to women who still overwhelmingly bear the heavy dual burden of being primary caregivers and workforce labourers. But what happens when late capitalism has permeated the notion of “self-care”, encouraging consumption itself as part of a holistic spiritual practice? Or when a “care of the self” becomes an Instagram label, used to showcase the results of a lip-plumping kit, manicure, or an Insta-filtered and staged $10 macchiato? What philosophy is at stake when magazines and periodicals tout this particular set of soy candles or bespeak aromatherapy or that $2500 per diem psychotherapy and spa program as the self-care du jour?  

Another version of a “care of the self” focuses primarily on bodily wellness. There are positive trends here. The combination of the body acceptance movement with girl power results in a new focus on #strongwomen rather than the thinness ideal long associated with the fashion industry. But some have argued that the #strongnotskinny ideal and its own genre of #fitspo is just as demanding of an ideal for women in its own way as the former, emaciated heroin-chic ideal, despite being a healthier and more rewarding overall goal.  

Even in bodily fitness, consumerist and late-capitalist signifiers of fitness tend to be emphasized over internal measures of physical well-being. Workout clothing has long shifted from repurposed tank tops and sweatpants from the back of one’s closet to a 9.6 billion dollar industry of its own. And the quintessentially American obsession with fitness has led to a series of performative fads, from expensive and restrictive diets that advertise one’s enlightened eating habits to pricey workouts.

But if late capitalism and performing membership of a leisured life have all but subsumed a “care of the self”, what might be an authentic or original version of the concept?  

Michel Foucault explored the Socratic notion of self-care as interlinked with another duty: self-knowledge. The project of self-care for the ancient Greeks, particularly through Socrates, demanded commitment to an ongoing cognitive process – a critical sounding of one’s ideas of oneself and the world. It is only through a relationship to truth-telling via rigorous ”dialectic” (literally, talking or thinking through something) that a person lives up to their own human potential. Socratic dialectic is a pre-modern mode of thought that is not wholly reducible to the scientific mode which relies on an opposition between subject and object to come to “objective” assessments of reality. It falls more under the notion of a “practice” or “techne” in Hellenistic culture.

This cognitive emphasis on self-care is radical for several reasons. It might be tempting, in the context of a biomedical view of the body, to focus on the physical and emotional benefits of learning and of cognitive behavioral therapy. While such effects exist, we could easily become locked in a therapeutic vision that envisions human flourishing and excellence primarily in terms of physiological and emotional factors. Once the parameters of flourishing are so reduced, it is possible to commodify them: the complex of factors constituting physical wellness can be subsumed into ”fitspo” and the richness of emotional lability can be swapped for positivity injunctions of #gratitude, #hygge, and #blessed.  

Instead, ancient notions of self-care invite us to fundamentally revisit our ideas of what constitutes human flourishing. Honest, self-reflective thought is difficult to commodify. As a consequence, a commitment to a discipline of critical thinking that engages oneself and one’s place in the world might represent the most promising subversion of capitalism to date.

This has direct political consequences. Plato would see Socrates’ own death as an exemplary instance of “parrhesia” – speaking one’s truth even when it is costly.  Such disciplined candour is an unavoidably political act in view of the fact that human beings are irreducibly political animals. Audre Lorde’s self-care may be much more appealing to the contemporary reader than Socrates’ — perhaps because self-preservation is a core feature of her version of self-care.  

Some of us today are fortunate enough to live in a society where self-examination and challenging of belief systems do not come at such a high price as that paid by Socrates.  However, late capitalist societies present their own peculiar challenges to self-knowledge where visions of self-fulfillment are daily bought and sold, promised and pursued. This New Year, we might put this meta-resolution at the top of our list: to see how a relentless commitment to truth-seeking can transform our lives and our world.